


little wins

by preromantics



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High School AU. / “You’re going to be late for the game,” Renly says, though it comes out low and less stern than he was going for, and he arches his neck back, pushing into the leather of the car’s backseat for the graze of Loras’ teeth on instinct.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little wins

It’s the crunch of gravel and burn out of someone pulling into the school parking lot that finally clears Renly’s head. He (reluctantly) leans away from Loras’ hungry mouth at the sound of it, twisting his hands where they’re fisted in Loras’ shirt to pull him back, laughing low when Loras just ducks back in toward his neck.  
  
“You’re going to be late for the game,” Renly says, though it comes out low and less stern than he was going for, and he arches his neck back, pushing into the leather of the car’s backseat for the graze of Loras’ teeth on instinct. “There are people pulling in around us, which means all the spots up high must be taken.”  
  
Loras hums and the sound vibrates against Renly’s throat. “Well, it’s a game that can’t be missed,” he says, shifting over Renly’s hips to look him in the eye. “And they can’t start without me, can they?”  
  
“I’m sure they coul—” Renly starts, but finds his mouth occupied before he can finish, and he tilts his head back for Loras as he rises up over Renly’s thighs to get a better angle.   
  
“When you’re class president,” Loras says, breaking away but keeping close enough that Renly can count the eyelashes that nearly curl up to his eyebrows (he’s lost count several times, but Loras has truly unfair eyelashes), “you’ll be able to order them to wait for me, anyway.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Renly says, his head knocking back against the headrest when Loras slides off his thighs to drop down onto the floor of the car between Renly’s thighs.  
  
“But if it worked like that,” Loras says, carefully unbuttoning Renly’s jeans, “you’d order them to, for me, right?”  
  
Renly groans and doesn’t say anything, but of course he would.  
  
-  
  
Loras really does almost miss the game, both of them — well, Renly, at least — tumbling awkwardly out of the backseat of Renly’s car, his brother’s old gigantic SUV. (Renly wanted something smaller and less obnoxious, but he can’t actually buy his own car until his next birthday, but the roominess and tinted windows have their perks. Loras-related perks, at least.)  
  
Mrs. Stark passes by them, heading up to the game with three of the Stark brood trailing behind her, Arya kicking a ball and laughing when she sees Renly almost fall on the gravel — Loras shoving at him in a haste to get out and change for the game, and really, Renly warned him — the ball just missing his head.  
  
“Loras,” Mrs. Stark says, looking at Renly instead of where Loras is leaning against the car tying his sneakers, “aren’t you late?”  
  
Loras runs past with a cheerful curse, leaving Renly awkwardly watching the Starks watching him.   
  
A voice from behind them all saves him, though, the high, lilting voice of Margaery. “Renly, darling! There you are! I saw my brother and knew you couldn’t be far.”  
  
Renly cringes, just a little, at the eyebrow raise Mrs. Stark throws him before turning to head once again toward the game.  
  
Margaery is at his side in a flash, looping her arm around his own. “Escort me back up to the field, now that I found you. We can discuss your latest campaign choice, and I’ll list reasons why I think handing out MP3 players with your face on them would be the best choice for election day.”  
  
“We’ve been through this,” Renly says, heading up the hill with her, following the flickering long shadows the smallest Stark boys leave behind them.   
  
“We’ll pay for them if you don’t want to,” Margaery says. “I just think it’s a nice touch.”  
  
“I don’t want people walking around listening to music attached to my face,” Renly says. “That’s so —”  
  
Margaery laughs when he can’t think of something to say. “When the Lannister twins won all those years ago, they passed out pencils with their faces on the eraser.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Renly says. His brother had a collection of the pencils and used to rub off the eraser with Cersei’s face on it on paper when he needed to vent.   
  
“Or you could release a sex tape,” Margaery says as they crest the hill. “I’d vote for you then.”  
  
Renly rolls his eyes. “You’ll vote for me anyway.”  
  
Margaery shrugs, sliding her arm for his and darting forward when they reach the field to buy a foam finger with Loras’ face on it.  
  
-  
  
Renly isn’t all that into lacrosse, not that he’d ever tell Loras, or god, crazed Margaery next to him. He can’t just not show up, though, not with the student body vote for class president coming up next week, and certainly not when Loras is playing. He waves his foam finger — Margaery shoved one at him when they met back up on the bleachers — around with spirit, though, and instead of the game he watches the secret competition those on the lower benches, egged on by Mr. Littlefinger, are having trying to throw popcorn into the Stark’s halfbrother, Jon’s perfectly curled and coifed hair before he notices.  
  
The game itself, as Loras and Margaery (and everyone else all day) kept insisting, is eventful and interesting enough, though hardly a championship game for the ages. (Renly liked last year’s game, when Loras was the freshman stand out the entire region couldn’t take their eyes off of, even though Loras only had eyes for Renly. Well, Renly and the goal, but Renly doesn’t mind sharing with inanimate objects, at least.)  
  
The ref calls a foul a third of the way into the game as Renly’s thoughts start to drift away from watching the events on the field and back to the events in the car before the game. He stands up on his toes to see over Sansa Stark’s height the row before him and squints out at the field, hoping Loras wasn’t the one to cause the foul or hurt or anything, but it’s just the freakishly large girl playing on Tarth’s team being called out for something minor.  
  
“That one is a beast,” Margaery says, and it almost sounds like she’s in awe. She’s absolutely crazy during games, which is why Renly dreads accompanying her, but it’s always amusing. It’s good to be seen with her, for the vote coming up, but she’s generally good company as well.  
  
“I heard she’s transferring from Tarth High to here,” Sansa says, turning around on the bleachers to address Margaery face-to-face.   
  
“She’ll have to be on the team, then,” Renly says, always startled by Sansa Stark — usually her cool and measured politeness is strangely nice, but it’s times like this Renly finds her obscure knowledge about everyone more unsettling than anything else.   
  
“Don’t let my dear brother hear you say that,” Margaery says, breathless from shouting as she plops down — somehow gracefully, as if the cool metal of the bleacher underneath her merely yielded to her weight — during a time out called by Tarth.   
  
Renly rolls his eyes. “She’d be a good addition to the team,” he says. “Look how dedicated she is on the field, and on the men’s team at that. Our team can always use players like her.”  
  
“Whatever you say,” Margaery says, “just don’t mention it to Loras. He’ll brood for ages and get jealous.”  
  
“Of her?” Renly says, narrowing his eyes, even as Margaery jumps back up onto the bleachers, screaming  _LORAS, HIGHGARDEN, NUMBER SEVENTEEN!_  at the top of her lungs, right into poor Sansa’s ear as Sansa turns back around to watch the newly resumed game, not without a parting glance at Renly.   
  
-  
  
In the last five minutes of the game, Loras actually does get knocked out. Renly almost misses it, because Jon Snow realized people were throwing popcorn into his hair about ten minutes before, and a small brawl between his strange group of ragtag friends, most going to the school on scholarships or because there was nowhere else that would accept them, and the popcorn assailants, had broken out, mostly involving name-calling and more popcorn throwing until Jon’s little sister Ayra ducked down and knocked people off their upper-bleachers before they realized what was happening.  
  
He glances up at the field just as it happens, though, and watches in horror as Brienne from Tarth High drives forward and knocks Loras to the ground, his leg getting caught in the downward swoop of her stick after the ball.   
  
Margaery shrieks, looking angry and worried in turns as she flies down the stairs toward the field, dress flowing behind her and foam-finger whacking unsuspecting people in the face.   
  
Renly hurries after her, trying to be less obvious as he runs down the steps, leaning against the barrister to watch the refs check over Loras on the field before getting too annoyed at the wait and jumping right over onto the field.  
  
Renly cuts through the small crowd of people gathers, and Loras looks fine when Renly can actually see him, rolling his eyes at someone checking his pulse and trying to sit up, just to have a hand shove him back down.   
  
Renly’s hand. “Don’t get up unless they say you can get up,” Renly says, and Loras makes a face,   
  
“You,” he says, shaking the pulse-taking person’s hand off and pointing it at Renly. “You distracted me! I looked and you weren’t watching.”  
  
Renly feels bad for a second, and then feels stupid for feeling bad, and then goes back to feeling completely worried that no one has said if Renly is actually fine or not.   
  
“There was a thing going on,” Renly says.   
  
“Say you’re sorry,” Loras says, staring unblinkingly at him.   
  
One of the refs laughs. Someone behind Renly declares Loras fine, but banged up.  
  
“Loras,” Renly says.  
  
“You should’ve been watching!” Loras says, but he’s smiling at little at the corner of his mouth.   
  
“I’m sincerely sorry,” Renly says.   
  
Loras grins, some of his hair flopping over his eyes when he leans up gingerly. “And you’ll make it up to me? All the bruises?”   
  
Renly doesn’t reply — there are loads of people around and there are tons of people on the bleachers — but he reaches out a hand to help pull Loras the rest of the way up, laughing when Margaery pushes some people out of the way to pull them both into a hug.   
  
“Thank god you’re fine, Loras,” she says, kissing him on his helmet. She squeezes Renly’s side and turns to him. “Just so you know, some people are blaming you for the popcorn fiasco with Robb’s brother, so we should probably do some damage control and skip the bleachers.”  
  
“What? How?”   
  
Margaery shakes her head and leans back to head to the side of the field, leaving Renly groaning and awkwardly hugging Loras in the middle of the field as the game starts to resume around them.   
  
“Come on,” Renly says, pulling away just enough that he can still tug at Loras. “Give Tarth it’s win and come rest.”  
  
Loras starts to protest, and Renly can feel an importance of sports rant coming on, so he shakes his head and pulls more insistently.   
  
“I thought you wanted me to make it up to you?” he says, quiet so no one in the bleachers above them can hear, but enough that he knows Loras picks up on it, if the way Loras goes straight-backed against his side indicates anything.   
  
“You could do it after, there’s only five minutes left,” Loras says, with a bit of a whine, but he’s already following without being tugged, so Renly ducks his head and grins at the grass, turning them around toward the school.


End file.
